Rite of Swing Jazz Café Makes Philadelphia’s Top 12 Spots for Live Jazz

by Boyer College
January 12
With a nod to Temple’s jazz program, the Philadelphia Inquirer named the Rite of Swing Jazz Café one of the city’s top 12 spots for live jazz. Boyer alumnus Tim Brey, '12 calls the weekly event one of jazz’s “best kept secrets” in Philly, where community members can experience live jazz performances by guest artists, Boyer faculty and its students for no charge. The Rite of Swing takes place in the Temple Performing Arts Center lobby on Thursdays throughout the semester from 4:30-6:30 PM. Read the full article

Dr. Steven D. Zohn Named Winner of the 2022 Georg Philipp Telemann Award

by Boyer College
December 06
American musicologist and performer Steven D. Zohn will receive the Georg Philipp Telemann Award on March 27, 2022 at a ceremony in Magdeburg, Germany. The winner of the 2022 Telemann Award has been associated with Telemann’s birthplace Magdeburg for many years as an active participant in international scholarly conferences, as an editorial board member and editor of the Telemann edition and as a member of the executive committee of the International Telemann Society. Zohn’s writings on Telemann have appeared in leading journals and reference works. In addition...

Dr. Charles Abramovic is Nominated by Jacobs Music for Steinway Teacher Hall of Fame

by Boyer College
October 20
Dr. Charles Abramovic has been inducted into the Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame, a prestigious designation recognizing the work of North America’s most committed and passionate piano educators. 2021 marks the second class of honorees, following the Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 2019. Each teacher inducted into the Hall of Fame was nominated by a Steinway & Sons showroom in the teacher’s home region. The teachers’ names are now displayed on a commemorative display wall inside the iconic factory. Dr. Charles Abramovic is Nominated by Jacobs Music for...

In Memoriam: Dr. Kariamu Welsh

by Boyer College
October 19
Boyer College mourns the loss of Dr. Kariamu Welsh (1949-2021), who was a beloved professor of dance at Temple University for 30 years before retiring in 2019. Welsh notably created the Umfundalai technique (Kiswahili for "essence" or "essential"), which she described as “a contemporary African dance technique that comprises its movement vocabulary from dance traditions throughout the diaspora.” She was an author and editor of seminal works on Afrocentricity and Black movement traditions, including her well-known 1997 publication Umfundalai: An African Dance Technique....

Brandon McShaffrey wins The American Prize in Directing - The Charles Nelson Reilly Prize, college/university opera division, 2021

by Boyer College
October 14
Brandon McShaffrey, resident stage director at Temple University, is the winner of The American Prize in DIRECTING—The Charles Nelson Reilly Prize (college/university opera division—larger program), 2021, for L'elisir d'amore. Brandon was selected from applications reviewed recently from across the United States. The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts, David (Volosin) Katz, founder and chief judge, is the nation's most comprehensive series of non-profit competitions in the musical and theater arts, unique in scope and structure, designed...

Terell Stafford and the Temple University Jazz Band Honor the Legacy of Jimmy Heath on their Latest Release "Without You, No Me"

by Boyer College
September 10
Album Features Heavy Hitters Christian McBride and Joey DeFrancesco Available September 10 via BCM&D Records January 19, 2020, bears a bittersweet tinge in Terell Stafford’s memory. On one hand, Temple University’s Director of Jazz and Instrumental Studies recalls that day with a great deal of pride and celebration, as the Temple University Jazz Band took top honors in the inaugural Jack Rudin Jazz Championship at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  That same night, however, Stafford received the sad news that the legendary saxophonist Jimmy Heath had died at the age of...

Recording Released of Guitar Compositions by Emiliano Pardo-Tristan

by Boyer College
July 30
Congratulations to Dr. Emiliano Pardo-Tristán on the recent release of "Sueños y Sones," a CD with his guitar compositions, performed by Marco Corrales, First Prize Winner of the Panama International Guitar Competition. The CD was presented at the University of Costa Rica in June.  Dr. Pardo-Tristán, adjunct professor at Boyer College of Music and Dance, will be giving the conference "Composing for the Classical Guitar" at the "Paracho Guitar Festival" in Mexico. He will also be part of the jury for the four categories in the Paracho Guitar Competition and...

No Strings Attached: Philadelphia Percussion + Piano Project to Release Album of Percussion Music by Marc Mellits on BCM&D Records

by Boyer College
July 22
The second album by the chamber music consort from the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University draws from a pool of talent across the Philadelphia region.    New York, NY – August 10, 2021 – On August 20, BCM+D records will release No Strings Attached: Percussion Music by Marc Mellits from the Philadelphia Percussion + Piano Project, recorded at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University. Anchored by the Boyer College’s Artistic Director of Percussion Phillip O’Banion, the rotating chamber ensemble seeks to underscore the variety and...

GRAMMY Museum Grant Program Funds Music Therapy Project

by Boyer College
June 28
The GRAMMY Museum today announced $20,000 in funding for a Music Therapy research project conducted by Professor Wendy Magee. Selected along with 11 other recipients, this project will test a new music-based measure for children with disorders of consciousness following brain injury. The study will test the reliability, validity and diagnostic capability of the Music therapy Sensory Instrument for Cognition, Consciousness and Awareness (MuSICCA), pediatric version of the Music therapy Assessment Tool for Awareness in Disorders Of Consciousness (MATADOC). This first...

In a Class of Her Own: Nicole Jordan, The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Principal Librarian

by Edirin Oputu
June 22
Nicole Jordan, BYR ’10, speaks three languages and is picking up two more. She knows the range of multiple musical instruments, what they can play and what they can’t. She can add bowing directions to sheet music for string players and fix awkward page turns. And she can analyze the structure and form of a piece of music, placing it in its historical and cultural context.  She is the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal librarian and its first female Black member.  Jordan stepped into the world of librarianship almost by chance. In her final year studying...

WRTI's Hometown Heroes: Spotlight on Drummer Justin Faulkner

February 03
Jazz and community. Jazz and activism. Jazz and family. These aren't just words for West Philadelphia drummer, composer, and educator Justin Faulkner. They're life lines, ideas on which to act, interact and intercede, to work toward, play with, and pray for.Ask him for a motto to which he lives, and Faulkner quotes Psalm 1:3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,which yields its fruit in seasonand whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.Not yet 30, this West Philly native—a drummer who could rage and thunder, who could tickle and...

Boyer's Conwell Dance Theater wins Best Dance Studio Of The Decade

January 14
We are honored to have won Best Dance Studio Of The Decade in the 2020 BroadwayWorld Philadelphia Awards! We are also pleased to announce that Temple Theaters won Production Of A Play Of The Decade for their 2019 production of Men On Boats.Winners have been announced for the 2020 BroadwayWorld Philadelphia Awards - which were back bigger than ever, celebrating the best in local theatre of the past decade! The public submitted the nominees and voted for their favorites. Check out the results below! The 2020 BroadwayWorld Regional Awards are presented by TodayTix. Community...

Just 3 Weeks To Vote For The 2020 BroadwayWorld Philadelphia Awards!

December 10
There's just three short weeks left to vote for the BroadwayWorld Philadelphia Awards - which are back bigger than ever, celebrating the best in local theatre of the past decade! Check out the local nominees, cast your vote, and support live theatre entertainment in Philadelphia!The 2020 BroadwayWorld Regional Awards are presented by TodayTix.Community theatre productions, student productions, and college productions are all included! (Please check respective category rules.) Eligibility is for productions which opened between 2011 and September 30th, 2020.Voting will run...

Covid Sessions: A Social Call named WRTI's Jazz Album of the Week

November 23
November 23, 2020. Imagine deconstructing an award-winning 21-piece band, scattering its members not just across the Delaware Valley but the country, having each instrumentalist record his/her parts individually, and then taking each of those individually recorded parts and surgically stitching it all back together to make it sound like the entire band was recorded in the same place, at the same time.That's what John Harris and David Pasbrig, faculty in Temple's music technology program, were tasked with doing in order to make the latest from the Temple University Jazz Band,...

WRTI's Hometown Heroes: Spotlight on Trumpeter Terrell Stafford

November 20
Trumpeter Terell Stafford has been hailed as "one of the great players of our time, a fabulous trumpet player" by the late piano legend McCoy Tyner. The acclaimed bandleader and recording artist has appeared on dozens of albums, including five of his own, and is a soloist with the Grammy-winning Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.Born in Miami and raised in both Chicago and Silver Spring, Maryland, Stafford recalled being transfixed when at age nine he happened upon a trumpet while visiting his grandparents' sharecropper's farm."To just hold this instrument in my hand because I...

Dr. Emiliano Pardo-Tristán wins the "Ricardo Miró National Literary Contest"

November 10
Congratulations to Dr. Emiliano Pardo-Tristán, adjunct professor at Boyer College of Music and Dance, who has won the most prestigious prize in literature in his native Panama, the Ricardo Miró National Literary Contest. The novel, "Lo blanco y lo negro", was chosen unanimously among 48 novels, by a distinguished jury. Sergio Ramírez, the 2017 winner of the prestigious Cervantes Prize in Spanish Literature, read the jury criterion: "... the novel is a brilliant exploration of the Caribbean world, seen through popular music, its warmth, color and rhythms, [...] With excellent...

Jazz Educators Step Up to Face COVID-19’s Challenges

October 19
In late August, members of the Temple University Jazz Band rehearsed on stage in Philadelphia for the first time since COVID-19 separated them in March. But they still weren't quite together. A series of giant plexiglass screens on rollers, spaced six feet apart, isolated the 21 musicians from each other and their leader, trumpeter Terell Stafford. Even before the music started, there were more reminders of the risks of playing in a group. Stafford, face mask firmly in place, checked with the horn section to ensure they had the proper bell coverings and filters needed to keep...

Dr. Emiliano Pardo-Tristán wins the "Roque Cordero Third National Composition Competition”

October 19
Dr. Emiliano Pardo-Tristán, adjunct professor at Boyer College of Music and Dance, has, for the second time, won the "Roque Cordero Musical Composition Competition." Pardo-Tristán won in the solo music category, with the guitar piece "Sonata en Azul," in three movements: I. Índigo; II. Lapizlázuli; and III. Zarco. Dr. Pardo-Tristán also got an Honorable Mention in the Symphonic Band category, for his work "1989 (Memories of the Invasion)."